Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming device, a terminal device, an image forming system and a non-transitory readable recording medium. The present invention more specifically relates to a technique of sending a print job to the image forming device from the terminal device and producing a printed output.
Description of the Background Art
A print job transmission function is regurarily included in an operating system of a terminal device such as a smartphone or a tablet terminal. The print job transmission function generates a simple print job and sends it to an image forming device. The print job transmission function called AirPrint (registered trademark) is regurarily included in iPhone (registered trademark) designed and marketed by Apple Inc. for instance, as one of standard functions of iOS (registered trademark) which is an operating system. The print job transmission function searches for the image forming device with which the terminal device is allowed to communicate and displays. After the image forming device to be a destination is designated by a user, the print job transmission function generates the simple print job and sends it to the designated destination.
The print job transmission function regurarily included in the operating system of the terminal device generates the simple print job that may be printed at various types of image forming devices and sends. When the user instructs to print using the print job transmission function, he or she is allowed to configure settings about limited print setting items such as the number of copies. On the other hand, he or she is not allowed to configure a variety of setting items that may be set at the image forming device which is the destination. It is assumed, for example, the user of the terminal device would like to print a paper that he or she does not want to a third person to see. Even in such a case, he or she cannot instruct a secured printing using a print function such as a confidential printing supported by the image forming device.
Print data outputted from a printer driver is changed to appropriate data for the image forming device which is the destination by a port monitor of conventional computers. This known technique is introduced for example in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. JP 2009-282695 A. According to the known technique, after receiving the print data from the printer driver, the port monitor temporarily stores the received print data and extracts print settings from the print data. The port monitor then obtains the print function of the image forming device from the image forming device which is designated as the destination, and receives setting operations of print conditions by the user. The port monitor merges the settings additionally configured and the settings configured at the beginning and regenerates the final print job. The port monitor then sends the regenerated print job to the image forming device. If the port monitor is equipped with the terminal device such as the smartphone or the tablet terminal, the user is allowed to configure the variety of the setting items that may be set at the image forming device which is the destination about the simple print job generated using the print job transmission function such as AirPrint.
If, however, the conventional port monitor as described above is equipped with the terminal device, all the process of determining the variety of the setting items that may be configured at the image forming device which is the destination and/or regenerating the final print job needs to be performed at the terminal device, resulting in extreme increase in load on the terminal device.